Having started out writing “very funny” literary novels, Rachel Cusk has switched more recently to “austere” auto-fiction, said John Self in The Times. Second Place is “a synthesis of old and new” – an experimental, philosophically-minded novel that also has “big characters” and some “truly funny” jokes.
M, the narrator, is a writer who lives with her husband in a house on the coast. She invites a painter she admires to stay in its annexe (the “second place” of the title), but he brings along an uninvited companion – an “authentically awful” younger woman. Though not flawless, Second Place is a fascinating work from “one of our most interesting writers”.
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